June 4, 2024–Public Advocates’ Managing Attorney Sam Tepperman-Gelfant spoke with Sierra Magazine’s Claire Greenburger about a mysterious Silicon Valley billionaire/LLC-backed effort to buy swaths of Solano County farmland to build a new city. The effort would come at a major cost to Solano County’s natural environment, disrupt the area’s farming system, and has included little community engagement about the proposed project or its potential impacts.
While alternative options may require “a little more tinkering,”… better alternatives are possible—and some are already underway. In the East Bay, the Concord Reuse Project, which will be developed on the site of a former naval weapons station, is slated to deliver over 12,000 homes, a quarter of which will be affordable and located adjacent to an existing transit station. In contrast to the project in Solano County, the Reuse Project has been developed across a diverse coalition of labor, environmental, and faith-based organizations. “It’s a climate-friendly and equitable development that is connected to existing communities,” said Sam Tepperman-Gelfant, managing attorney at Public Advocates.
